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Employment Contract Solicitors - Employment Lawyers Australia
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In an event your employer has repudiated your contract or seeks to change the terms or conditions, you may require professional advice from a specialist employment solicitor. We can provide that advice. To speak with one of our employment law solicitors fill out the contact form, send us an email, or phone our law offices on the helpline.
If an employer tries to change, or changes the conditions or terms of any employment contract by modifying an employee’s pay rate, grading or classification, or work conditions that might provide the grounds for a solicitors claim for compensation due to the breach of the contract, if the employer’s actions can be judged unreasonable. This breach could occur even if there were implied conditions within the contract’s terms or by the employer, if those terms are not met by the employer the “trust and confidence” of an employer/employee relationship is seriously damaged.
Although breaches of contract occur between an employer and any employee, claims for compensation for a breach are more often utilised by executives involved in employment disputes than other employees. The rationale behind the executives more frequent use are statutes that bar executives from using other approaches due to the application of legal salary caps or income thresholds that preclude qualification or the cap placed on a compensatory award for executives.
Other employees could and often do utilise the breach of contract, especially more recently. Knowledgeable employment lawyers routinely apply statutes contained in the Trade Practice Act of 1974, which was renamed as Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA), in compensation claims for a breach of contract and with considerable success. If your employer attempts altering or changing the terms or conditions of an employment contract, you should contact our helpline immediately for advice regarding your rights or potential claim. Taking the urgent advice of a specialist employment law solicitor could be crucial to your case, given that an employee that refuses the lower pay rate involved in redeployment within an organisation might be found unwilling to mitigate damages, in certain situations. Whatever are the particular circumstances in your case, it would be best to take legal advice without wait.
The CCA is not the only precedence utilised by solicitors in compensation claim litigation for breach of contract, several high award cases during recent years have given solicitors plenty of precedence. Courts are now taking into account an employer’s implied responsibility to their employees. Additionally, courts can award a compensatory damage for “loss of chance,” as well as the personal distress which may have been suffered in lifestyle changes and possible health disturbances when it can be shown by the solicitor that these occurred subsequent to a wrongful dismissal.
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Letter of Appointment
Formal contracts, normally drawn up by the employer’s legal personnel, are quite rigid and often cover every aspect of employment law and the relevant employment issues that might arise. However, those appointments that are based on an exchange of letters usually do not contain the same detail as a formal contract and are apt to omit certain issues of employment. It may often be an advantage to an employee or executive to have been employed through the use of the letter of appointment because the letter might be silent on certain matters and common law is oftentimes more considerate of the employee. An employee or executive can sue an employer under a breach of contract case utilising the basic appointment letters or those conditions actually contained in a contract and even those implied by the employer.
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Common Law Rights
When you accept employment based on a letter of appointment and suddenly the employer wants a unilateral establishment of a contract of employment, you can be certain that employer does not have your best interests at heart, in most cases it would however be in your best interest to take immediate legal advice. The employment contract could mean a loss of your basic common law rights. When that employer issues an ultimatum, sign or resign, this is in effect the threat of dismissal if you don’t meet his terms under a new agreement. That action could permit a claim for constructive dismissal or an unfair dismissal. Constructive dismissal happens in employment disputes when the employer’s behaviour or conduct in effect dissolves an employer/employee relationship so that any “trust and confidence” is forsaken and the sole realistic choice is for the employee is termination of their employment and giving the appropriate notice. However always consult an employment law professional before taking such action.
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